The Accountancy Clinic

With accounting there is never a magic quick fix solution. What’s clear from ICAEW research is that owners of small businesses are spending a large proportion of their precious time doing bookkeeping, accounting and also general admin tasks when they could be focused on growth opportunities. Understanding the financial position of your own business is important but you can pass the reporting and hard graft over to your accountant freeing up your time for to focus on tasks that are more likely to generate revenue.

Understanding the financial side of your business can be challenging – we want to empower business owners with a better understanding of common accounting related issues and to feel confident to handing over any time consuming data-entry and bookkeeping to your accountant and seeing them as a trusted advisor.

It’s important to find the right kind of small business accountant to work with. Find an individual or firm who’s interested and wants to be hands on. Ideally they’ll specialise in helping small businesses in the sector you’re in. Calling your accountant a few times a year to courier your records over and get tax return sign off should be a thing of the past.

We’d like you to view your accountant as a trusted advisor and expert. A friend of your business. If you need funding but don’t know what type – they’re your first port of call. Finding payroll or PAYE a bit tricky? Call them. Is growth your goal? They should be there. Dealing with HMRC? You shouldn’t have to.

In the last few years, technology has changed accounting, making it faster and forcing greater transparency. This has meant that small business owners can save their precious time, money and demand more from their accountant. Sadly some accountants are guilty of a much more ’light touch’ service. They’ll expect to only help with the bigger tasks like tax return and if you need anything additional adhoc – it’s going to cost you.

Cloud technology has meant the birth of a range of new add-ons and apps that have very clear objectives – saving you time, money and unnecessary headaches. These additional services that often bolt on to your cloud accounting software are changing the industry.

MarketInvoice have teamed up with Xero cloud accounting software and Receipt Bank – two businesses leading the way in this field – to bring you advice on finding the right accountant and streamlining your paperwork. In partnership with KPMG Small Business Accounting- whose fixed price accounting packages embrace this ‘value added’ philosophy- we’ve brought you The Accountancy Clinic: an access all areas troubleshooting ebook with answers to the most common accounting questions.